<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Peccavimus! by abbysojee</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23083687">Peccavimus!</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbysojee/pseuds/abbysojee'>abbysojee</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Golden Sand [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Spies Are Forever - Talkfine/Tin Can Brothers, The Spies are Foreverse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Spy puns, literature references</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:15:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,608</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23083687</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbysojee/pseuds/abbysojee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After a disastrous rescue attempt, Owen Carvour flees with his lover Curt Mega to a tiny Spanish hostel. Faced with the horrific actions Owen took to save Curt, both grapple with the new knowledge of Owen's capacity for rage.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Owen Carvour &amp; Agent Curt Mega, Owen Carvour/Agent Curt Mega, Owen Carvour/Original Female Character, Owen Carvour/inner turmoil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Golden Sand [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1389760</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Look Upon Therefore us Unhappy Sinners</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Owen throws open the door, the hostel owner's angry Spanish yelling following close behind - “<em>¡Qu<span>é</span> demonios! - Todo cubierto de sangre - ¡mi alfombra!</em>” When the door closes, the yelling fades, but the room echoes her hostility. It's barely bigger than a shoe box. A queen bed with piss-yellow sheets takes up most of the room. A vase of white flowers - “asphodels,” Owen chokes out, <em>because of-fucking-course he’d know that</em> - sits on a table stuffed into a corner. It reminds Curt, absently, of their apartment in Zurich.</p><p>He doesn't ask how Owen knew where his room was. In fact, he hasn’t said a word since Owen rescued him from the Serrano compound. The only sound he gives is a grunt as Owen heaves him onto the bed. He doesn't look down as Owen begins untying Curt's boots. His gaze is distant, still caught on the compound’s cold cement floor.</p><p>Owen’s hands stop midway through unfastening Curt's left boot. They flutter in the air like pale butterflies, conflicted. Curt can sense he isn’t bearing the test of silence. Then again, Owen never could. And people accuse <em>Curt</em> of being the chatty one. Owen settles his head on Curt's lower leg, voice muffled. "Are you ever going to talk to me again?"</p><p>"You didn't have to do… what you did." Curt's voice cracks. His eyes are focused on the stain, the compound's cement floor turned pink with blood and brain matter. Curt’s first mission as an agent was to protect a recently caught Vichy official days before his trial. He had failed, found the official floating face-up, white in the Med. He would never forget that image, that first kill. The stain, to Curt, is that very same returning tide. <em>Oh god</em>. He needs to throw up, to expel the echo. The stain the blood the bits of hair the memories - it’s too much.</p><p>"I know, love," Owen says. There are tears in his voice, not his eyes. He moves to sit next to Curt on the bed. "I just... When I saw them hurting you, I - I got <em>so </em>angry. I'm so sorry - I’m - ”</p><p>His apologies mean nothing. Curt's eyes focus on the en suite bathroom in front of them, as ugly as the room with its cherubic wallpaper. It's his reflection in the mirror, though, that he scrutinizes. His left eye is blackened. A long cut tore his forehead, flooding his right eye with blood long dry. He looks like a demon. He’s as pale as a corpse.</p><p>He watches Owen's head drift closer to his neck, feels Owen's hot breath as he whispers over and over, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Soon words break off and Owen's head bows, placing a feather light kiss behind Curt's ear that makes him laugh and choke up at the same time. Curt shuts his eyes, hoping to escape his memories, but the darkness sharpens his visions of skull blood stain.</p><p>Owen replaces the feather lights with heavier kisses, sucking a bruise on the base of Curt’s jaw. They're usually careful about leaving marks, worried someone will connect the dots - or the hickies - but Owen doesn't seem to care. Curt's already returning with bruises. Why not add more? 

</p>
<p>His breathing comes out more harshly as he shifts to the backboard - it’s been a <em>long</em> couple of months since they’ve been together. He had dreamed, strung up by his wrists, of Owen, as desperate as a starving man. <em>Perhaps this is a dream</em>, he thinks as Owen follows him, nipping at jaw and ear. But his mouth - his hands - are all too real. Curt wraps his own around Owen, pulling him closer. "How long do you have until they notice you're missing?" He asks, checking his watch over Owen's shoulder to find it not there. Of course it isn't. Serrano took that too. </p><p>Owen draws back smiling, relieved. "I have all night." He kisses Curt, and Curt's eyes fall shut. He focuses on the <em>now</em>. 

</p>
<p>That night, Owen is more gentle than usual, as if trying to make up for what Curt had seen. It works. It doesn't take long for Curt to forget Owen straddling Manuel Serrano, beating his head in with the butt of his gun, face twisted; a god, Poseidon, bearing a red-pink sea.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Sword of Vengeance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Owen leaves in the dead of night. He does not - as his very disgruntled handler ordered - head to the nearest MI6 safe house. Instead, he finds himself at Juan’s,</span>
  <em>
    <span></span>
  </em>
  <span>a seedy bar where liberals and communists alike drink their sorrows away. There are others, of course, like the young man crying into his empty glass and a group of gossiping women at a table, their necklines low and brows drawn thread-thin. Owen avoids their eyes. They look like sharks, hungry for blood in the water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Owen orders a beer. His Spanish accent is horrid, not as good as his German or, hell, even his Hebrew. Curt, of course, has his Spanish perfected. He speaks six languages fluently (and Portuguese passably) to Owen’s five, a fact that never fails to irk him. Owen is supposed to be The Best.</span>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He had been a promising agent before he met Curt. It’s not Curt’s fault, of course, that most of his missions seem to end in disaster, a bellboy-turned informant, an explosion. He could be more careful, and Owen has told him so, if only out of concern for his lover’s life. But Curt is motivated by well-meaning, bumbling love, not ambition. Not like Owen. And he works with Curt often enough that his own success-to-failure ratio has become stacked against him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His superiors wonder why he continues to work with Curt Mega. He tells them Curt is useful, smarter than they give him credit for, good for a laugh. “You’re throwing away your career,” another agent had asked him, “to befriend that idiotic Mega? He must be a better fuck than I thought.” The agent had laughed, clearly pleased with his joke, but Owen wanted to hurt him. He wanted to bury the fork he was holding into the agent's hand. His rage had surprised him, and he had resisted, but even the memory of the comment fills him with white-knuckled anger. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But now, leaned over a bar, drowning in cheap beer, Owen wonders if the other agent’s words are truer than he once thought. Has he really given up his career as one of MI6’s most promising agents to stay with Curt Mega? He loves Curt - he loves no one else like he loves the other agent. But Curt is holding him back. Even in the lightest moments, basking in the afterglow in their apartment, or hearing Curt's absurd laughter at one of his stories, he knows that Curt is holding him back. Usually, it doesn't bother him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps due to the alcohol, or the closeness of death, or Curt's cold silences, </span>
  <span>the anger always pooled in his gut blazes. Who is Curt Mega to chain Owen Carvour down? Owen is smarter than him, more cultured, a better shot, and damn it, his Spanish accent isn't <em>that </em>bad. He stews in the storm of his silent fury. </span>
  <span></span>
  <span>So when one of the prowling women - “Isabella,” she introduces herself with a heavy laugh - asks him if he wants to get out of the bar, he doesn’t say no. <em>Take this, Curt, </em>he thinks from Isabella’s arms as they kiss and groan against her apartment door. It is a tiny, petty revenge. It feels like triumph.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She falls asleep against him, an arm thrown over his chest as if she knew he was going to try and leave. But it is not her arm keeping him there but the crushing weight of guilt. In less than two days, Owen has disappointed Curt Mega twice. He knows he fucked up with Manuel Serrano, and it makes Owen sick thinking about the man’s face when he finished bashing it in. But he had not felt sick in the moment. He felt vindicated, drunk on rage, and fear, and glorious relief that Curt was </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and the need - the conviction - that Serrano would never touch him again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had awoken from his bloodlust as if it was a dream. He wakes again, in Isabella’s bed, feeling similar horror. He and Curt never talk about it, but he knows they expect each other to be faithful. To love only each other. In another life, if they could, they would be bound to exclusivity by rings. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Owen has never loved anyone like he loves Curt, but he has failed him twice. Thinking about Curt’s coldness is enough to convince Owen that he can never know about Isabella. </span>
  <span>He considers killing her, strangling her or asphyxiating her with his pillow, to make absolutely sure Curt will never learn of her. He goes so far as to place his fingers against the pulse point on her neck before he reigns himself in. She doesn't deserve to suffer because she picked up a dangerous, partially unhinged secret agent in a bar. How could he even contemplate murder, weighing a woman's life against his own pride? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Owen has never loved anyone like he loves Curt. And that love, Owen knows now, is dangerous. Curt lit a fuse within him, something buried so deep inside of Owen he had no idea it even existed. He didn’t know he was capable of such rage, such desperate thinking. But he knows the truth now, and so does Curt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is a weapon in his lover’s hand, dangerous if Curt ever realized it. But he never will; </span>
  <em>
    <span>Owen </span>
  </em>
  <span>is the manipulative one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is The Best. </span>
  <span>And he would sacrifice everything for Curt.  </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The title is taken from the poem "Lenore" by Edgar Allen Poe, because of course it is. Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>